Hi,
Just joined the forum today and I apologise in advance if I've posted this in the wrong place.
I 'discovered' calibre yesterday so I'm still getting to grips with it. The reason I decided to try calibre was so I could write my own books. I realise that calibre may not be speciffically designed for this purpose but it looked good.

I have tried my first faltering steps with it and have done a short test book just to get the feel of it. Everything seemed go work well and I can see and read it on my Prestigio Multi Pad 7 Pro. Trouble is, the formatting I did in the book (picture alignment, text size and justification etc) has been ignored.

I did the book by using Word and saving the result in the Web Page Filtered option then ran it through calibre okay. Is there anything I've missed here please?

I can live with the result if nothing can be done but I'd rather have the book in the format it was written in if possible.

@seafire.
If you are planning on marketing your book, design for best results on the Mainstream devices, not some smaller brand/render engine. Adobe Digital Editions (devices that use), Kindle, Nook, Apple i thingies

If your primary goal is writing books then you would be better off using Sigil. Calibre is excellent for library management and book conversion but it's not really a book writing tool.

Sorry, I can't comment on conversion from Word as I don't use it.

Hi,
I 'discovered' Sigil late last night and after having had a brief play with it, it seems to be just what I need. I'll keep on using Calibre though as it will have its uses for me too.
I think the problem I'm experiencing with formatting could be down to to how my reader is displaying it. I think I'll try it through various readers and see if there's any difference.
Thanks for your reply, I really appreciate it.

@seafire.
If you are planning on marketing your book, design for best results on the Mainstream devices, not some smaller brand/render engine. Adobe Digital Editions (devices that use), Kindle, Nook, Apple i thingies

I wasn't planning on marketing my book(s) just yet though I'd say it's something that is on my horizon. At the moment I'm just feeling my way around the available software.
As you point out though, I feel I'm going to need to upgrade to a mainstream device and I have (at the moment anyway) Kindle on my consideration list.

Just to say that I'm well into using Sigil now apart from one or two little issues but I wouldn't have even got that far without the sterling help and advice I've received on this forum. I' also been experimenting more with Calibre and I can see clearly how this will assist me in the future.

I now feel much more confident in what I'm doing so again, my sincere thanks.

Are you aware of Kiwidude's "Open With" plugin? This lets you open books from within your calibre library with applications of your choice. You can use this to open a book in your library directly with Sigil, (it's one of the built-in options.)